When will Froyo hit Australia? The complete list

When will the new 2.2 version (commonly called Froyo) of Google’s Android operating system hit Australian handsets? We contacted carriers and handset manufacturers to find out. The answer, it turns out, depends on what mobile phone you have.

When asked, Vodafone boasted that its over the air (OTA) Froyo update will be coming in July to the Google Nexus One handset it is exclusively selling down under.

“The Android 2.2 update will be available as an OTA update from Google — customers who buy the Nexus One exclusively from Vodafone will receive a message directly from Google on their device once the update is ready,” the company said in a statement. “Timings on the update are still to be confirmed, however are anticipated to be available within weeks of the launch day.”

HTC — which has several Android handsets in Australia, notably the HTC Desire and HTC Legend that are sold with the 2.1 firmware — said that the 2.2 OTA could be expected next quarter although a date was not confirmed.

“We are working hard with our partners to update the HTC Sense experience on Froyo and distribute it to our customers as fast as possible. We expect to release updates for several of our 2010 models including Desire and Legend in Q3,” the company said in a statement.

Sony Ericsson has a number of Android handsets in the Australian market — the Xperia X10 and the Xperia X10 Mini pro that both run Android 1.6. But the company was not ready to respond about Froyo, although it was quite ready to talk about updates to its own platform. “Unfortunately Sony Ericsson aren’t able to comment on Android 2.2 at this stage,” the company said.

An update for Xperia’s User eXperience platform (UXP) will be released in September and October/December. This will add the ability to do HD recording and also bring wireless connection capabilities with some users’ TVs (to view Sony Ericsson’s Mediascape and Timescape applications).

Representatives for Samsung — which recently launched its Galaxy S handset in Australia — evaded the topic, not responding to a request for comment on the issue. The 2.1-driven Samsung Galaxy S is exclusive to Optus and Virgin for its first month of sale.

Froyo was available for download since last week for those desperate for the OS firmware update but an OTA update is a more normal option for those not as keen or as savvy to upgrade manually.

The Froyo has significant updates to the OS which means greater control, loads of interface changes and the performance benchmarks are cranked.

There are more options in menus — for example the 2.1 settings menu had “sound and display”, whereas 2.2 has “sound” and “display”. Gmail updates include senders email address preview underneath the bold type of the senders name. Facebook email notifications will display the person of interest Facebook avatar in the email.

I have to agree with this. I understand that the operators all like to put their own unique interface and apps on Android, but there should be some underlying code that can be updated through Google’s servers automatically and not have to have it funnelled through the carriers and handset manufacturers. As time goes on, this is only going to become more of an issue.

iOS is a closed OS and a benefit of a closed OS is that the developer (Apple) can pick and choose exactly what will be delivered and when. For example, Apple chooses what features of iOS 4 will be missing on the iPhone 3G and chooses that it won’t support the first version of iPhone or iPod Touch (I’m not saying it should, I’m just saying Apple can do what it wants).

As an open OS, manufacturers can choose how it wants to support Android. The disadvantage is that customers are at the mercy of manufacturers to deliver Android updates. This issue plauged Windows Mobile devices and I believe this is why Microsoft has been so tight with hardware configuration for Windows Phone 7 so that Microsoft can deliver OS updates itself without the manufacturer because the hardware platform is significantly fixed. However, Microsoft has not decided to take over hardware development (as they did with the Zune) so that manufacturers can deliver a variety of form-factors, such as no keyboard, T9 keyboard, horizontal or vertical keyboard, flips, slides, candy-bars and just about everything else inbetween.

The Windows Mobile comparison is a good one. But at least forward-looking manufacturers like HTC — who I believe really *gets* Android more than the other handset manufacturers — appears to be moving relatively fast in bringing updates to the platform.

In an ideal world, I would like to see a situation where 99 percent of the Android OS could easily be updated by users from Google’s centralised servers (the same way the iPhone is), while the manufacturer’s (usually useless) surface layers could be updated separately from their own servers. The best of both worlds.

I think that these applications are in the processing of being named ‘junkware’. Don’t for a moment think that Telstra are the only offenders: HTC themselves populate their phones with applications that are unable to be removed. A Twitter client called Peep, various Facebook things, music player apps, redundant clocks and so on. It’s nice that they through this stuff in, but if they aren’t crucial to phone operations, then we should have the ability to remove them and restore them later should we choose.

No worries. It is hard to get this info out of the handset manufacturers at all, generally. HTC is the best at the moment in terms of providing info, IMHO, Vodafone and Telstra are the best at providing info from the carrier side — Optus hardly ever tells us now even when they’re launching a major handset — such as the Milestone.

“HTC — said that the 2.2 OTA could be expected next quarter…” what does this mean? given this article was written in July, “next quarter” is Oct-Dec. Or was the interview in June, meaning “next quarter” is actually July-Sept?

Hmm not sure Glenn — I think a lot of people forget about the Magic! We’ll try and find out. As far as I know, the HTC Sense interface is not on the Magic, so it should be a lot easier for HTC to adapt Froyo to the platform. I am sure — as with the other devices — that there are also people who have already hacked the firmware onto the Magic ;)

Yeah, I am running Cursor Sense which is a Sense based 1.6 firmware for the magic. There is no official sense firmware for Australia but other markets have it whcih is why there are hacked sense versions for the magic.

I am thinking about upgrading to the CyanogenMod Froyo version but I love the sense UI. I may have to wait till there is a hacked sense 2.2 rom for it.

Yeah I like the Sense UI as well — I have been playing with it on a HTC Desire. I am not quite sure how much of it is Android and how much of it is HTC. Need to do a proper review of a phone with a ‘vanilla’ Android install to find out, I guess. How ‘vanilla’ do things get on the Android platform?

Sense is basically the contact, phone and home screens and plus matching home screen widgets. Most of what you see is vanilla android but sense adds polish and a a bit of functionality. There really is nothing in Sense that you cant bolt on with an app but sense is so tuned to work as efficiently as possible. Team that up with the speed improvements of 2.2 naturally and it should still be workable even on the magic.

I’m not using the Sense launcher any more, using Launcher pro and liking the stream line appearance of it over the sense launcher. I can’t use any sense widgets but then again I wasn’t using them in the first place and can still run the ‘HTC’ apps.

Unfortunately I’m not able to comment on my Xperia purchase plan at this stage. In fact, I won’t be buying any smartphone until the RETAILER can SHOW me how to upgrade. Hopefully that is before the battery dies on my dumbphone :-)

It’s a bit of a shambles, but it is an immature market: upgradeable phones have only been around for a couple of years (or so). How many computers would be sold if their owners couldn’t find out when, or how, they might be upgraded? Anyone still using Windows 95?

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